ANC indaba faces legal wrangles

Legal action could throw a spanner in the works of this weekend’s ANC national elective conference.

A number of ANC branches have already turned to the courts to approve their participation – and a last-minute interdict to halt proceedings is a possibility.

Hundreds of aggrieved ANC members in various provinces believe they were marginalised by the Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma-supporting provincial leaderships in KwaZulu-Natal, Free State and North West.

Mpumalanga members aligned to presidential hopeful Mathews Phosa may be included in the conference after an agreement with Luthuli House this week to attend to their complaints and to ensure their participation.

It is clear the conference will be going ahead without addressing many of the branch complaints that caused them to approach the courts.

Indications are that the courts wouldn’t be able to deal with the matters before the conference, unless a last-minute urgent interdict is sought to stop it from going ahead.

However, the excluded delegates could still participate if the national executive committee (NEC) finds in their favour or the conference itself reaches consensus to include them. But the credentials are likely to be a bone of contention that could even see the conference collapsing.

The situation arose after hundreds of members in KwaZulu-Natal, Northern Cape, Free State and North West approached the courts in their respective provinces to challenge leadership elections, improperly conducted branch general meetings (BGMs) and their marginalisation during the recent provincial general councils (PGCs). KwaZulu-Natal ANC recently appealed a court ruling to nullify its 2015 provincial conference and its decisions, including the leadership election.

In the Northern Cape, individual members asked the court to nullify the outcome of the May provincial conference at which the provincial executive committee was elected. The Free State ANC was instructed by the high court in Bloemfontein to rerun BGMs.

But instead of doing that, they went ahead and held a provincial conference without holding the BGMs.

Also, the legitimacy of Free State’s provincial general council is being challenged after it overran its term of office by at least nine months.

In North West, several branches interdicted the Bojanala ANC region over alleged rigging of branch processes prior to the regional conference.

On Wednesday, the Grahamstown high court ruled against ANC members linked to the Dlamini-Zuma camp, who challenged the October provincial results and the PEC legitimacy.

In the same province, members in the OR Tambo region also challenged the regional results, claiming manipulated outcomes at branch level.

Political analyst Nathan Dufour said that as Gwede Mantashe, the ANC secretary-general, had explained, all BGMs that had convened by the extended deadline should be able to send their chosen delegate(s) to the conference.

“But you can never be sure if some of those who didn’t manage won’t try to go to the conference and create problems. The Free State example from 2012 shows that this happened in the past but was dealt with by the ANC on the spot.” he said.

– ericn@citizen.co.za

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